Obama was happy to get into a spat with Mitt Romney aboutwho as president would or would not have authorized the raid that captured bin Laden. That
way no one was debating the real issue: instead of killing bin Laden, should we
instead have upheld the due process principle of our rule of law and
transported him back to the United States for a trial? No one in the main
stream media is even whispering that question.
The Republican’s misdirection involves torture. Once again, Republican torchbearers are making the incredibly inaccurate statement that enhanced interrogation
techniques—their polite word for torture—produced information that led to
identifying bin Laden’s location in Pakistan. In this case, the former
director of the CIA’s clandestine service, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., revived the
lie in a new memoir, Hard Measures,
and with an appearance Sunday night on the CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Once
again, those in the know like Senators Dianne
Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence,
and Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, are
correcting the lie by reminding us that all information leading to the
identification of bin Laden’s location came from traditional, legal and
non-painful interrogation.
But what
do the Republicans care if they are called on the lie? They still will have
moved the country away from asking and answering the questions, “Is torture
legal?” and “Is torture right?” Instead, we are focused on the question of efficacy:
“Does torture work?” Asking if it works implies that its use is accepted, at
least conditionally.
The
torture misdirection helps the Democrats as much as it helps the Republicans.
The Obama Administration doesn’t mind if we pose the torture question in a way
that appears to give proponents at least a chance of winning, as long as we’re
talking about torture. That way we won’t be talking about the continued
existence of Guantanamo and its dozens of prisoners mired in a legal no-man’s
land. That way we won’t talk about assassinating U.S. citizens without the
benefit of due process. That way we won’t talk about increased raiding of state-legal
medical marijuana operations or signing the bill to reauthorize the indefinite detention in
military custody of US citizens. I could drone on about civil rights abuses by
the centrist Obama Administration….Speaking of drones…
We should not be
talking about torture at all, except to pronounce prison sentences on Bush II,
Cheney, Ashcroft, Gonzales, Addington and the other architects of the illegal American
torture gulag. We should have moved on to a wholesale reevaluation of the
increased security measures we implemented after the 9/11 attack that have led
to a reduction in civil rights of our citizens and others.
But then again, we
should not be talking about the legality of abortion almost 40 years after Roe
v. Wade.
And we shouldn’t
still be debating the merits of offering birth control to women as part of
healthcare insurance.
We should not be
talking about if the theory of evolution is valid.
We should not be
talking about if the earth is rapidly and dangerously warming, another pieceof misdirection that the Times continues to support with its vetting today of the already disproven theory that
clouds will absorb excess warmth and prevent us from enduring the perils of climate
change.
And it’s truly
amazing that we’re still talking about soldiers in Afghanistan.
And how could we
possibly still be debating poll taxes, which in my mind is anything for which
you have to pay to be able to exercise your right to vote.
So maybe it
shouldn’t be so surprising to me that someone in the world is still defending
the use of torture. The persistence of false ideas takes our attention away
from what must be done: for example, to reinstate tradition civil rights for
everyone; educate our children in understanding and using the scientific
method; and reduce human generation of carbon-based emissions.